How property managers request a lease from applicants
By Arthur Teboul, DokuTrak · Published
In short
Ask applicants for their current or most recent lease to confirm rental history: the landlord, the address, the rent and the dates. When you take over a property from an owner, ask for every existing lease with all addenda and amendments, because you inherit those terms, deposits and end dates.
Why property managers need a lease
For an applicant, the lease backs up the rental history on the application and gives you a landlord to call for a reference. For a new management agreement, the owner’s leases are the rules you now enforce: rent, due date, who pays utilities, pet terms, the security deposit held and when each lease ends. Without them you are managing from the tenant’s memory.
What exactly to ask for
From an applicant: the signed current lease, all pages, plus any renewal. From an owner hiring you: the fully signed lease for every occupied unit, with addenda, renewals and amendments, and a note of the security deposit each tenant paid.
What to check when it arrives
- Both landlord and tenant signatures are present and every page is included.
- Rent, dates and address match the application or the owner’s rent roll.
- Addenda for pets, parking or utilities are attached, since they change what you enforce.
Email to send your client
Replace the bracketed parts. The same text fits in the message of a DokuTrak request (up to 1,000 characters).
Subject: The current leases for your property
Hi [Client name],
Thank you for choosing us to manage your property. Before we take over, I need a copy of the current lease for each occupied unit.
Please send the fully signed leases with every page, plus any renewals, addenda and amendments (pets, parking, utilities). If you have a note of the security deposit each tenant paid, please include it too.
Could you send them by [date]? If a lease is missing or was never put in writing, let me know and we will sort it out together.
Thank you, [Your name]
Ask once. DokuTrak does the chasing.
- Your client uploads from one link, with no account and no password.
- Reminders go out on a schedule, by default 2, 5, 10 and 14 days after the request, until the file arrives.
- With AI review switched on in your workspace (it is off by default), each upload gets a first pass that flags a file that is not a lease, an unreadable or blurry scan or a copy where one of these is missing or cut off: the tenant’s name, the property address. It says so when it is not sure.
- You accept every file or mark it for re-upload, and your client gets the note by email. The AI never accepts a file.